On Sat, 15 Mar 2003, Jack Park wrote: (01)
> I know, I'm rambling here, but I am reminded not only of the Knownspace
> approach, but the topic maps approach, each taking a minimalist ontological
> commitment with which entire universes of discourse can be represented. RDF
> is similar, with a minimalist ontological commitment on which RDFS can
> layer further ontological commitments according to user needs. (02)
I agree with you that Knownspace (and the other things you
mention), by placing very few ontological constraints on the
user/developer, allows it to be capable of representing just
about anything. (03)
That's a two edged sword, though. It offers you enormous power
but you must use enormous power to manipulate it. To make Helium
go we had to limit our Entity-Attribute thinking to just mail,
otherwise our heads would have exploded. (04)
Ontologies provide scaffolding for users and developers. They are
a sacrifice made in favor of getting something done: let's narrow
the goals so we can reach them is in the same field as let's
narrow the grammar so we can talk. (05)
Knownspace, topic maps and RDF are not quite commonly used
because they don't make their affordances evident. They are
excellent and powerful tools, but the experience of using them is
not far from telling a potter, "here, make me a pot out of these
atoms of silicon and this other stuff over here." (06)
I've overgeneralizing but: It's amusing/ironic/strange that it is
often the people who strive for minimalist ontological
commitments in computer data structures are the ones that want
formal ontological commitments in human communication. (07)
Just continuing the ramble... (08)
--
Chris Dent
cdent@blueoxen.org (09)
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